


voyage to norfolk

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 18:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14361246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Jackson takes his new sort-of family back to the place he grew up.





	voyage to norfolk

They drive to Norfolk in the late days of September, Mulder and Scully and their infant daughter and their grown son. Jackson is eighteen, a legal adult. He’s staying in the spare room that they’ve slowly began converting to his. He restarted his junior year of high school a few weeks ago. Lily is nine months, expected to start walking any day now. She giggles and kicks her legs like a swimmer in her car seat, chews on one of her toys joyfully. She loves being in the car. (“Just like her dad,” Scully has said on occasion. It makes Jackson uncomfortable and he can’t explain why. Maybe he doesn’t want them to start listing traits he’s inherited from them, even though he could make that list, easily.)

Jackson, Mulder, and Scully rotate between the driver’s seat even though it’s only a three hour drive. Jackson drives with a carefulness that surprises them, he can tell. (Mulder says it’s because he inherited  _his_ driving skills instead of Scully. Scully privately thinks that it’s because of Lily, and she would be right. He is overly careful when he spends time with his sister because he can’t bear the thought of hurting anyone else. He’s damaged too many people to do anything to this kid.) Mostly, Jackson just likes to drive. There’s a peacefulness to being behind the wheel that he enjoys. Mulder usually sits up front with him, bickering companionably with him or offering unasked-for stories about cryptids he’s encountered in the area that Jackson secretly loves. Scully sits in the backseat most of the time, quiet, playing with the baby, but he knows she is listening, enjoys listening. She bickers companionably with Mulder, too, as Jackson suspects they will someday bicker with the kid. They seem to be a companionable bickering type. (Mulder loves to bicker with him, but Scully treads carefully, an unshed habit except for when it’s things like school or eating healthy or leaving for days and not calling. She seems to feel guilty about more.)

When they drive past the coast, Jackson is filled with a certain nostalgia. He misses the beach, he misses home, he misses his parents. He drives past the ocean with a lump building in his throat.  _Let me give you the tour,_ he thinks bitingly, flipping on his turn signal.  _Here’s where my grandfather tried to kill me and here’s where he sent the men to kill my parents. Here’s where I caused a car crash just because to see if I could. And here is where my girlfriends almost killed each other because of me._ He doesn’t know why he wanted to come back here.

They go to the cemetery first. Jackson parks at the edge of the bright green lawn, pauses for a moment in the front seat with his hands clenched around the wheel. He can’t do this. He hasn’t seen his parents since last Christmas, freezing and shivering in the graveyard as rain pounded the ground and tears dripped down his face. He hadn’t worn a coat and he tried to hear his mother’s scolding in the back of his head. When Sarah had broken up with him and Bri hadn’t ever texted back, he hadn’t been able to ask anyone to come and check on their graves. He could’ve asked his old friends, he supposes, and some of them probably would’ve come, but it was somehow harder to face them than Bri or Sarah. (Not that it would’ve been any easier to face them. He was a fucking idiot, here in Norfolk, and now he guesses it’s time to be a fucking idiot in Farrs Corner. But a different kind. The normal kind. One that doesn’t leave anyone dead.)

“Want us to go with you?” Mulder asks gently from beside him, and it’s only then that Jackson realizes that he hasn’t moved in several long minutes. Hands gripping the wheel too hard.

Scully is watching from the back, Lily fussing against her shoulder. “We’d be glad to,” she offers.

Jackson shakes his head, his jaw tight. “No,” he says. Bringing them there would be like a betrayal, he thinks. Like spitting on their graves.

He climbs out of the car, pausing only to retrieve the bouquets of flowers from the trunk. He’s halfway towards the plot where his parents are buried when he turns around, coming back to the car. He doesn’t know why he wants to do this, but for whatever reason, he does. He doesn’t want to go alone and if he can’t ask Mulder and Scully to go with him, maybe he can ask something else. He opens the backseat and asks Scully in a low voice, “Can I take her?” Some part of him inside, some younger part who used to be excited for his parents to meet his friends, to see the two worlds meet, wants them to meet his sister. He can’t explain it, but he does. And taking the kid, even if she’ll have no idea what’s going on, is better than going alone.

Scully hesitates for only a minute, brief surprise flickering over her face, before nodding and lifting Lily out of the seat. Jackson takes her in the crook of one arm, juggling her between the bouquets. Lily giggles, tugging on Jackson’s overlong hair in a soggy fist. He grimaces affectionately at the kid; time for a haircut, probably. He bounces Lily once on his hip. And then he sets off again, the roses (his dad’s favorite, what he always gave his mom on their anniversary) tickling his nose and the kid yanking alternately on his hair or earlobe like she’s on an amusement park ride and feels she needs to hold on.

At their graves (the words loom large in his mind, like they’re bolded and capitalized; he can’t get away from them), he mutters in the baby’s ear, “These are my parents, Lils. I’m visiting my other mom and dad.”  _Only,_ a part of his mind insists; it feels traitorous to acknowledge Mulder and Scully as the  _other_. They gave him up, gave up their rights to that. But. They love him, and Lils, and he is the kid’s brother. Unquestionably. He has been the kid’s brother since he held her for the first time, since he sensed her presence in the back of his mind, the most trusting that anyone has ever been around him, and he’d thought,  _I need to make sure that what happened to me never happens to her._ He can’t be her brother and  _not_  be Mulder and Scully’s son, even if he will never be the son they want him to be.And Mulder and Scully love Lils and him both. They’ve given him a bedroom, food, clothes, a life. Despite everything that’s happened, all the lying and the seizures and the faked deaths and the manipulations. So. They are the  _other parents._ He has no choice.

He feels the need to crouch on the ground before his parents’ graves and beg forgiveness.

He sets Lily on the ground and kneels by his parents gravestones, lying the roses on the ground. Presses his palm against one of them, traces his mother’s name with his thumb. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he whispers. “Dad. I’m so, so sorry.” He’s said that every time he’s come here, and it still isn’t enough. Maybe he’ll still be saying it twenty years from now.

Lily gurgles cheerfully, yanking up grass in her fists. Jackson wipes tears from his face. He wants to curl up between their graves, the way he used to lie between them in bed when he was little. He wants to be small again, if only because they’d still be alive.  

He sits down on the grass, cross-legged, and stays with his parents for a few minutes. He doesn’t talk because he doesn’t know what to say, but he thinks that might be okay. They’d always been okay with sitting in silence. He hopes they understand.

When he is ready to leave, he scoops up Lily and whispers to his parents, “I’m safe. I’m okay. I miss you so much. I’m sorry.” The most vulnerable he’ll let himself be. He wipes his face again.

“Gaaaaah,” says Lily, very seriously, like a little mini Scully. She’s got that stern look in her face, the icy blue eyes that manage to be warm and steely all at the same time; it’s kind of creepy. But the kid’s Mini Scully Impression still seems sincere, somehow, like she’s trying to express her care. Jackson waves goodbye to his parents before walking back to the car, letting the kid grip his t-shirt and smear it with grass stains all the way there.

Mulder and Scully are waiting outside, watching him carefully. They’ve knocked down most of the awkward walls and bounds between them (they even ground him now, go fucking figure, isn’t he supposed to be an adult at this age?), but this is an area they all tread carefully around. The subject of his Other Parents. The only ones he’s ever known.

When he suggested this trip, they’d both agreed without question. Don’t want to cross that line, or maybe they wanted a real family vacation, no matter how fucked up. Whatever the reason, they’re here now.

Mulder lifts Lily out of Jackson’s arms instinctively, watching him carefully. Lily presses her tiny hands to his face and says, “Ahhh-guh-guh.”

“Yes,” Jackson replies, deadpan. He’s remembering when he was five and he begged and pleaded for a little brother or sister. They’d tried to adopt a little girl but it’d fallen through. He wonders if it would’ve been like this. “Ahhh-guh-guh, Lils. Very observant.”

“You okay, Jackson?” Scully asks, a hand going to his back. “I know this has to be hard for you.”

“Yeah, I'm…” He clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m fine,” he says, but his voice cracks. He looks down at the ground, tears blurring his eyes. They buried his grandmother in this graveyard. He never thought they'd…

Scully steps forward like she can hear his thoughts—and that’s right, she can—and wraps her arms around him. He doesn’t wriggle away like he might have a year ago. He lets her hug him. He might hug her back. Mulder reaches out with his Lily-free hand and squeezes his shoulder.

As of yesterday, it’s been two years since his parents died. Two years since Scully stood over his not-dead body and tearfully apologized to him again and again. They’ve come a long way since then.

—

He wonders sometimes if his parents would disapprove of what he’s doing now. Living with his birth parents after everything that happened, everything he did. He would’ve gone somewhere else but there was nowhere else to go. He didn’t have other relatives, anyone else to live with. He likes to think they’d want him to be safe, no matter who it’s with, but his birth parents were the subject of several arguments, several tension-filled moments between the three of them. He wonders if they’d be upset, him living almost constantly with his birth parents and a new baby sister. His chest stings at the thought of it. He never wants to disappoint them again. They died because of him, it was his fault.

But that night in the hotel, lying in the room that he has to himself (that’s Mulder and Scully catering to him, or maybe one grumpy kid is enough) and listening to Lily wail through the wall, he dimly remembers a conversation he had with his mom once. At six, he’d been angry and sullen, demanding to know why his birth parents had given them up, storming around his room and kicking toes over in a prepubescent rage. “Well, maybe they couldn’t take care of you,” his mom had said gently. “And they knew that you would’ve had a much better life with us than with them.”

He’d pouted, flopping down on the couch with his arms crossed. “Then they must be pretty bad people then,” he said angrily. “If they couldn’t have taken care of me.”

His mom went quiet, uncertain. She sat down beside him and pulled him onto her lap. “Baby, they must’ve been pretty good people if they could make you.”

Jackson swallows, rolling onto his side. He doesn’t know what to say, how to apologize. But he has to believe that they’d be okay with it. He has to. His parents would want him to be safe and secure and happy, wouldn’t they. And he doesn’t know if he is that. Happy. But he likes to think he will be, someday. When he gets some space. When he starts over. And it’s not as if it’s a fleeting emotion—there are times when he’s been sort of happy, with his new friends he’s made in Farrs Corner at the job he’d insisted on getting or prowling the woods with the dog or at the dinner table with Mulder and Scully and the kid, when he finds himself reflexively laughing and realizes that he isn’t trying to care about these people. (He doesn’t  _have_  to try. It’s hard, sometimes, but it isn’t forced. Not anymore.)

In the morning, he goes down for breakfast and finds Mulder and Scully at a table, Scully with a plate of fruit and a bowl of oatmeal, Mulder eating a sticky hotel lobby waffle. Lily is dozing fitfully on his shoulder with a pacifier drooping from her mouth. “Hi, Jackson,” says Scully. “How’d you sleep?”

“Fine,” he says, sitting down across from them and resisting the urge to add,  _Better than you;_ he may not have actively heard Lily crying half the night, but he can sense the exhaustion emnating from all three of them. “Hi, Mulder,” he adds. “Hi, kiddo.”

Lily blinks sleepily at him, as grouchy as he’s seen Scully on any given morning after a late night at the hospital. “Lils is a little grouchy this morning,” Mulder says affectionately, cupping the back of her head. (Surprisingly chipper for a guy who barely slept. “Insomniacs fare better with a new baby,” Scully had said tensely over a cup of coffee about six months ago. “Too bad Mulder wasn’t around when you were a baby.”) “Meanwhile, your mother’s headed that way. Those new kids Skinner assigned to the X-Files are stuck on a case, and they want our expertise.”

Scully’s already rolling her eyes, taking a sip of her coffee;  _Headed?_ Jackson hears against his skull, prickly and annoyed, but more good-natured than six months ago. She reaches up to where Lily is and lets the baby curl her hand around her finger. “What case, Mulder?” she says in the soft voice she reserves for when The Baby Is Sleeping. “There  _is_  no case. They’re stuck because there is  _nothing_  to find.”

Jackson raises his eyebrows, settling into his chair. He’s heard this argument before and knows how to chime in. “Okay, fine,” he says. “What is it? I’ll give my input and help you out.”

Mulder—usually the receiver of Jackson’s inevitable support—grins. Scully mutters something about not knowing how much actual help he provides. So more or less a normal breakfast.

—

Jackson takes Mulder, Scully, and Lils to a restaurant that he describes fondly, remembers fondly. He’d spent half of his afternoons here, the night after he went to prom with Bri and her friends, dinner after dinner with his parents. He tells them a story of having his seventh birthday party here, laughing so hard that soda spills all over his shirt as he describes one of his friends trying to start a food fight with handfuls of his birthday cake. Mulder and Scully listen, Scully bouncing Lils on her knee. Jackson can tell that this is a little hard for them to hear, but they pretend well, listen attentively. They do care; they’ve asked him about the missing years a lot, want to know about him. He’s been the same way, asking more and more questions as the months stretched on. He wanted to know her better, he’d told her two years ago. And now he does.

Across the restaurant, Mulder nudges Scully and points out someone that looks like Brianna. (They’re probably trying to be subtle, but it doesn’t work; Jackson doesn’t know how Mulder managed to hide out for six years without getting caught.) Bri is watching them with a strange look on her face, like she might want to come over and talk to Jackson. Jackson pretends not to see her. It’s been two years and he likes to think he’s matured a little (even if not much). Lily smears Scully’s food all over her face when she’s not looking, and Jackson laughs as hard as anyone.

He takes them to the old playground he remembers from his childhood and pushes Lils on the baby swings. He goes to his old schools and looks around, tries to remember being a kid again. Mulder and Scully go with them, their eyes starry like they are trying to imagine themselves in this life. They go to his house, where someone else is living now, and he is unable to go to the door and knock. He wonders how many people in this town still think he is a murderer.

Mulder tousles his hair before wrapping his arm around Jackson’s skinny shoulders. Scully holds Lily with one arm, but her other hand is on his wrist. They stand together for a moment and look at the house. The lights are off, no car in the driveway, but Jackson won’t break in. He wants to, but he won’t.

They go to the beach, a private spot that he loves. Mulder has inflatable water wings on Lily even though Scully won’t let him take her any further than the shoreline. Jackson wades in up to his ankles, lets the saltwater lap over his feet. Behind him, he can hear Lily’s laughter, can feel her happiness in the back of his mind. He smiles thinly. He hopes Lils will have a happy life, a good childhood. Better than him. And he thinks Mulder and Scully will be able to give her that. After all, there’s no

Scully steps up beside him, her face turned towards the horizon. “You know we grew up on the coast too, right?” she says, her hand raised up to her eyes to shield it from the sun. Her hair is whipped wildly around her face in the wind. “Mulder in Martha’s Vineyard. Me in San Diego.”

“Yeah, I think you mentioned that,” Jackson says. The wind is mussing his hair too, blowing it tangly. He really needs a haircut. He’ll mention it sometime next week.

Scully smiles dimly, wiping her hands on her shirt. “I enjoyed seeing where you grew up,” she says, and means it; he knows she wants to know the kind of life he had without her. “It’s a beautiful town.”

He swallows. He knows this trip couldn’t have been easy, especially considering everything they’d gone through in Norfolk. “It is, yeah,” he says. He swallows again, his mouth dry. “I kind of… miss this place sometimes,” he says, and means something else. His parents’ graves on the bright green lawn. Maybe he’ll come back at Christmas again. Maybe he’ll call his friends tonight and see if they want to go out tonight. (But not to his old hangouts, the Chimera or the sugar factory; those are forever ruined.)

Scully rubs his back, the two of them looking to the horizon. “I know,” she says softly. And she does. The three of them, Mulder and Scully and him, understand loss better than anything. It’s a shared language, one that he hopes Lils will not have to learn for a long, long time.

They don’t turn until they hear Mulder’s panicked, “Lily!” and the kid’s delighted squeals. Jackson whirls, stumbling on the sand, in time to see Lily stumbling away from the water where she’d been balancing holding onto Mulder’s hand. She takes a few wobbly steps before landing on the sand on her hands and knees. Mulder swoops in and scoops her up as if to comfort her, but the kid is laughing with delight. Scully is at their side in a second, kissing the top of Lily’s head, an arm wrapped around Mulder’s waist.

Jackson smirks; that kid knows exactly how to get everyone’s attention. She’s already spotted him over her (their) mother’s shoulder. She waves her arms wildly as if motioning him over, giving him an insistent look. The feeling she’s transmitting has no actual words, but if it did, it’d probably be something like,  _Get the hell over here, asshole, this is_ my _moment._

Jackson goes, the waves crashing over his feet as he joins his sister and his other parents on the beach.


End file.
